Where There's Smoke, There's Fire
by darkebonyrose901
Summary: Narvex joins the Organization to learn about the forgotten past that haunts her present, but ends up with much more than she bargained for. ZexionOC


_This is my first fanfic with my OC, who replaces Xigbar in the story. Please don't flame or troll or leave rude reviews. Narvex is copyrighted to me, darkebonyrose901. Please don't use her without my permission._

* * *

><p>Rolling emerald hills. Flashes of scarlet. A confusion of sounds. Smoke, so much choking smoke...<p>

And then, darkness.

Narvex awoke in indigo-tinted darkness, gasping for breath. It was the same thing every day: she was plagued with the same nightmares over and over. _When will this end?_ she wondered silently, her chest aching where a heart would have been.

She rubbed the one flat charcoal eye that wasn't covered by the eyepatch she wore even in sleep. Beneath her eyes, etched permanently into her alabaster skin, were two inverted black triangles. She had no idea where they came from; she had had them for as long as she could remember. They served as a reminder for her forgotten past, drifting in the recesses of memory like smoke on the wind.

She swung her legs, clad in ebony leather, over the edge of her bed, and shuffled over to her large window, which gave her a sweeping view of the crystalline towers silhouetted against the star-studded sky of The World That Never Was. She had no idea what the time was; The World That Never Was was shrouded in perpetual darkness, and so it was like being cloaked in the blackness of an eternal night.

Time didn't matter to Narvex, though. Each day was the same as the next: fighting, going about the motions... feeling hollow all the while. Most Nobodies didn't retain any knowledge of their past lives, and it was true for Narvex... except for two things: acid green eyes, filled with hurt and confusion, and thick smoke, obscuring her vision, filling her world with poisonous smog.

These two images haunted her. It was why she had joined the Organization, as number II. Narvex had been in the Organization for several months now, and her stark white room in the highest tower of the Castle That Never Was had become her sanctuary. It was all she knew; pristine ivory walls, obsidian shadows.

Xemnas had promised to show her the light, but so far all she had was darkness, and emptiness. Xemnas may have been the Lord of Nothingness, but even he could never understand the way she felt: like her heart was a void. Being called a Nobody suited her just fine.

She started at the sound of a knock on her door, and a cold voice saying, "are you awake, Narvex?"

"Yes, I'm awake," Narvex said, and walked over to open the door.

It was Zexion, standing a few inches shorter than her, silky slate-blue hair sweeping into the unfathomable depths that were his eyes. Zexion... if he had a heart, it would be one made of ice. His eyes, though... the deep cobalt orbs showed a hurt deep inside them, so deep inside that only others who shared the pain could see it. Narvex could see herself reflected in those eyes.

"We've been assigned a mission," he said, and quickly turned away. It was as if he couldn't stand to look at her. Did he, too, see himself reflected in her? Were they like two silvery mirrors, eternally reflecting one another, on and on until the vanishing point?

Narvex had no choice but to follow.

Halloween Town was, as usual, shrouded in night. It seemed that wherever Narvex went, she couldn't escape the darkness, both inside and out. She felt at home, though, among the twisted shapes and looming shadows that lurked here.

She ran a hand through her hair, a shiny, deep granite, streaked throughout with yellow and emerald. Her hair and good eye were the colours of smoke itself, for that was what she was: the Mistress of Vapour. Ever since she had joined Organization XIII, she had unlocked the powers deep within her: the power to turn any part of her body to smoke, and to control smoke in the atmosphere. The powers were both a blessing and a curse; with them she could help the Organization, and in doing so, discover her past, but having a power so great could also be a burden. It was too much responsibility sometimes, to hold such a power in her hands.

"We need to scout the area," Zexion said from beside her in his flat, emotionless voice. A voice that masked such pain.

Narvex turned her attention back to her surroundings, her ashen locks flowing in the stagnant wind, and reached up to remove her eyepatch, revealing a crimson eye, like someone had taken pure fire and filled her irises with it. It glowed with an otherworldly flame. This was where her powers stemmed from, and it was why she wore an eyepatch most of the time. She needed to contain her powers somehow, otherwise they would leak, draining her of what little life she possessed.

As soon as she took her eyepatch off, power started thrumming through her body, like liquid heat through her veins, scorching her, burning her very soul. She clutched tightly at her weapon, trying to ward off the pain. She needed to be strong. She would stay silent; she refused to cry out, despite the scalding pain, for to do so would be a weakness.

Her weapon was a pitchfork carved of deepest ebony, wickedly sharp, gleaming like a black jewel in the darkness of midnight. It was studded here and there with magnificent rubies, emeralds and topazes, matching her hair and her eye of power.

"I see a Heartless," she said, and turned her entire being into smoke. She floated toward the Heartless with a purpose where her heart would have been; it was a nice change of pace from the usual emptiness.

Meanwhile, in the depths of the Castle That Never Was, Xemnas spoke to his subordinates.

"We have a new member arriving today," he said, his voice as deep and chilling as the farthest reaches of space. "And I think our Mistress of Vapour will find him very, very interesting."

The new member arrived in a tornado of garnet-hued flames, and Xemnas smiled.


End file.
